Syracuse, N.Y. -- Lawyers who didn’t ask enough questions, or interview enough witnesses. University employees who didn’t tell their supervisors that reporters were asking about sexual abuse allegations against a basketball coach. A chancellor who did not to tell her bosses what she knew about those allegations.

And the biggest mistake: Syracuse University and its lawyers failed to notify police about allegations of a serious crime.

Few people were spared in a report released Thursday on how SU handled a 2005 investigation of sexual abuse allegations by former ball boy Bobby Davis against SU’s associate head basketball coach Bernie Fine.

While the report, prepared by three university trustees who are all lawyers, says the 2005 investigation by SU lawyers Bond, Schoeneck & King was prompt and fair, it also heaped plenty of criticism on many of the main players.

“We do not suggest that the university should or should not have reached a different conclusion, or that a more thorough investigation would have ‘proven’ whether or not Davis was telling the truth,” the 52-page report read. “That issue remains unresolved—and bitterly disputed—to this day. We can and do conclude, however, that the university’s response to the 2005 allegations could have been better in several respects.”

Most importantly, the university and its lawyers should have contacted police instead of handling the allegations as an internal personnel matter, the committee said.

“Davis’ allegations should have been viewed from the outset as involving serious alleged crimes, and therefore presumptively a matter that required law enforcement involvement,” the committee wrote. “If they turned out to be true, then the failure to have approached law enforcement at best exposed the university to harsh criticism, and at worst allowed a child molester to remain in place in the community without being called to account.”

Stephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardBobby Davis, a former SU ball boy, told SU officials in 2005 that Bernie Fine had molested him as a child.

Davis had told SU officials and BS&K lawyers that he had already been to police in 2002 — when he was 30 — and was told the allegations were too old to prosecute. The 2005 report notes that SU did not call police, but the committee’s report also notes that lawyers never talked with SU officials about whether police should be called in.

“Although the ultimate decision” to contact police belonged to SU, the report said the responsibility for not contacting police rest primarily with BS&K — a firm that SU has paid $20 million in the past decade.

The report also says that BS&K lawyers should have told Chancellor Nancy Cantor about Davis’ allegations that Fine’s wife, Laurie, had sex with basketball players — allegations that Laurie Fine denies.

And it also took Cantor to task for not informing the board of trustees – not even the chairman – of the Bobby Davis allegations and investigation. Cantor told the committee that when the BS&K lawyers found that “Davis’ allegations were unfounded, it was not necessary to circulate them more broadly.”

The report offered little criticism of Cantor.

Without singling out Cantor, the report did note, however, that there was no senior-level meeting of SU administration after BS&K completed its investigation “to discuss the whole situation, including the risks that Davis’ claims presented, the manner in which the university could better protect itself and its constituents, and the broader implications of Davis’ allegations.”

Cantor did not return phone calls Thursday. In an e-mail to students and employees, she did not directly address the report’s specific criticisms, but said it would help SU in the future.

“The report cites certain things, with the benefit of hindsight, that should have been done better or differently,” Cantor wrote.

The trustees’ report was more critical of BS&K. It said that it was reasonable for Cantor “to assume that the lawyers not only had looked at the facts, but had considered generally how to protect their client, and whether the client should have done more in response to or as a result of Davis’ claims.”

One of the two BS&K lawyers on the 2005 investigation was Thomas Evans, who has represented SU since 1972, according to his SU biography. Evans is part of Cantor’s cabinet with an office at the university, while remaining a partner with the law firm.

Through a spokesman, BS&K declined to comment other than to say that it fully cooperated with the review.

The trustees committee, which worked with the New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, interviewed 21 people in its eight-month review. Neither Davis nor the Fines would be interviewed.

The committee consisted of three SU trustees, all members of the board’s executive committee: Chairman Richard Thompson, a health care attorney in Washington, D.C.; Deryck Palmer, a New York City bankruptcy lawyer, and Joanne Alper, a retired Virginia circuit court judge. SU trustees authorized the committee to review of the 2005 investigation last fall after Davis’ allegations were made public first by ESPN and then The Post-Standard.

The committee found that SU’s response to Davis’ allegation was “prompt, appropriate and undertaken in good faith without any attempt to conceal the alleged conduct.” Within three hours of an anonymous e-mail in September 2005 that an unnamed university employee had abused someone, Cantor had passed it along to the assistant chancellor. By the next morning the dean of students had responded to the e-mail, and three days later Davis wrote back with his name and more details of the allegations.

Davis was brought in for an interview that lasted two hours and was never asked any substantial questions again about his allegations of more than 15 years of sexual abuse, the committee concluded. “The interview did not fully plumb the depth of Davis’ claims,” the report reads.

Had lawyers talked with Davis in more depth, the committee said, they might have discovered the existence of an audiotape between Davis and Fine’s wife, Laurie Fine, made in 2002. On the recording, which Davis secretly made, Laurie Fine expresses no surprise when Davis alleges that her husband had molested him. Instead, she asks Davis for details about his sexual contact with her husband.

SU fired Fine on Nov. 27, the day that recording was made public by ESPN and The Post-Standard.

Fine, 66, an SU assistant coach for 36 seasons, has not been charged and has maintained his innocence. Syracuse police and the U.S. Secret Service have been investigating the allegations against him for 7 1/2 months.

Davis’ attorney, Gloria Allred, said she will review the report with Davis and comment Monday.

Problems cited

Among the other problems the trustees committee found in the 2005 investigation:

• Lawyers failed to talk to two people that Davis said might have been potential abuse victims. “There was no good reason not to make the effort to contact the two men,” the committee said.

• BS&K did not have expertise in investigating child molestation and did not employ an expert to help it investigate Davis’ claims.

• BS&K lawyers allowed Bernie Fine to change his original statement but did not note the change in their report. Fine had originally said Davis might have stayed alone with him in Fine’s hotel room during a road trip, but that was deleted from the final report at the request of Fine’s lawyer.

• BS&K ended the investigation when it could not corroborate Davis’ story, failing to address broader questions about “interactions between underage persons and the university’s athletic and other programs.”

• At least two employees in the SU athletic department – assistant basketball coach Michael Hopkins and former strength coach Corey Parker – were questioned by The Post-Standard in 2002 about the allegations but never told their bosses about that. Both men, the committee said, should have.

All other administrators interviewed by the committee – including head coach Jim Boeheim; Kenneth “Buzz” Shaw, chancellor at the time, and Jake Crouthamel, who was athletic director then – said they knew nothing in 2002 and 2003 of the allegations or the media inquiries. The committee seemed skeptical.

The report also questions when Boeheim became aware. Boeheim told the committee he knew nothing about them until the 2005 investigation. The lead attorney at the time, Evans, told the committee that Boeheim gave him the impression he had “known of the media inquiries when they took place” in 2002 and 2003.

Clery Act compliance

The trustees’ report does not address whether or not SU met its obligations under the federal Clery Act, which requires colleges to report crimes or threats reported on campus.

Through a spokeswoman at the Paul, Weiss firm, committee Chairman Palmer said in an e-mail that “the Davis allegations did not fall within the reporting requirements of the Clery Act.”

The Clery Act says “campus security authorities,” usually campus police or public safety departments, are responsible for reporting crimes on campus, according to Alison Kiss, executive director of Security on Campus, the Clery Act’s nonprofit watchdog.

SU’s Department of Public Safety was not notified of Davis’ claims, according to the report.

“Most of the university personnel with whom we spoke were unable to articulate any standard for when and whether allegations of serious criminal conduct should be reported to superiors or to law enforcement,” the report says.

It goes on to say that SU should consider a new formal policy of how allegations of certain crimes should be referred to the Department of Public Safety for further reporting to law enforcement.

SU is already taking steps to clarify procedures and putting in place new policies to prevent problems in the future, according to the report and Cantor's e-mail. Among them:

• A Joint Board of Trustees/SU Working Group on Policies Related to Sexual Conduct, Campus Culture, and Safety, which is reviewing sexual harassment or abuse policies.

• New policies have been adopted in programs “in which campus community members interact with minors,” Cantor said, including athletics.

• New policies in the basketball program “requiring supervision of the minors at all times by a designated program staff member and clear policies regarding permissible and impermissible travel,” according to the committee.

Details about these changes were not available Thursday from SU.

“Our goal remains fostering a safe and secure environment for all members of the University and the community,” Cantor wrote. “The most important things now are that we continue to learn from these events over the long-term and that anyone impacted by abuse or harassment is able to come forward in a supportive environment.”